As you no doubt have seen by now this morning, former Trump assistant Roger Stone is the latest to be arrested in an early-morning FBI raid as part of the special counsel investigation into coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia during the presidential election of 2016. Inside the charging documents related to that arrest are stunning revelations that tie a “senior Trump campaign official” directly to the Kremlin, using WikiLeaks as an intermediary.
In short, there is now proof that the Trump campaign was, in fact, indirectly but purposefully in contact with Russia, proven through an established chain of evidence.
After unusual activity yesterday by the grand jury in this case, most news agencies yesterday were speculating that the next arrest would be the conspiracy theorist and far-right birther whacko Jerome Corsi. CNN guessed a little better and sent their camera crew to Roger Stone’s house instead, where they captured exclusive video of the arrest. But playing over the backdrop of that footage was analysis by a panel on the cable news network that included David Gregory, formerly of NBC, who shed some light on a very specific two-paragraph passage of the Stone indictment.
The section in question reads:
By in or around June and July 2016, Stone informed senior Trump Campaign officials that he had information indicating Organization 1 [WikiLeaks] had documents whose release would be damaging to the Clinton Campaign.
After the July 22, 2016 release of stolen DNC emails by [WikiLeaks], a senior Trump Campaign official was directed to contact Stone about any additional releases and what other damaging information [WikiLeaks] had regarding the Clinton Campaign.”
Gregory was succinct in his analysis, saying that it was widely expected that Mueller would establish through documented evidence and presentation in court that Russia was responsible for the DNC hacks and other cyber crimes against the United States. Once Mueller has done so, it’s a one-step process to connect Trump to Russia after this indictment, since the Trump campaign was clearly using Roger Stone and WikiLeaks as intermediaries for the purloined data that they knowingly used in an effort to help the campaign.
But Gregory summed up best the entire attitude and approach of the Trump campaign when he said,
If we pull back even farther, we understand something that we’ve understood for months, which is, the Trump campaign was ‘open for business.’ For any oppo research, whether it was from the Russians or anybody else. And that’s a key piece in all of this, and I think that is what is consistent.”
Watch the CNN clip here:
Featured image via screen capture
